


Point to This Map of Me

by mooosicaldreamz



Category: Glee
Genre: F/F, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-01-18
Updated: 2012-01-18
Packaged: 2017-10-29 18:03:59
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,077
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/322644
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/mooosicaldreamz/pseuds/mooosicaldreamz
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Quinn Fabray was in love with Rachel Berry, in secret. In hidden spaces.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Point to This Map of Me

**Author's Note:**

> All I can tell you about this, honestly, is that I angsted myself into this place where writing this fic was the only way I could break it. If you listen to Snow Patrol enough...anyway. I hope it isn't too cerebral for anyone's taste, and to be honest, it's far too one-sided to even count as Faberry. The title is from the song "Isn't She Everything" by Rockwell Church. It really makes the fic sound much more poignant than it actually is.

It kills her, in the needling fashion that Beth’s existence made itself known as a heavy knot locked in her lungs and begging to be unraveled. The moments where she lets herself wander through some mythic wonderland where she can admit she’s in love with what she hates...they hold her to the earth like massive stones, and push frantically against her to rise above it. It’s exhausting.

 

Nothing about her existence appears to be redemptive. She spends her nights clicking through MySpace videos and deleting comments that are never noticed. She types letters of apology that are never sent. She makes playlists that are never saved. She looks at maps of New York and lets herself forget that the forever she’s dreaming of will never come to pass.

 

Rachel Berry taunts her at every moment. A year ago she would’ve claimed it was through some sort of will to ruin her life in every aspect, taking her boyfriend and popularity and ability to cope off and away into the open air on the wings of a song. Quinn has said as much to Rachel and punished her for it, and has in turn apologized and protected fiercely. Their friendship is mired in  _kind-of_ ,  fraught with  _almost-there_ , and the nature of it wraps itself in Quinn’s nervous system.

 

She can’t say when she fell in love with Rachel.

 

Maybe it was that first moment, walking into the hallways of McKinley and seeing this very short girl with a determined face, her face dripping with what looked like a colored and icy beverage. Maybe it was somewhere around the nights when all she could do was complain to an apathetic Santana and a clueless Brittany about Rachel Berry and her obnoxious habit of being  _alive_ . Maybe it was the opening strains of “Keeping Holding On.” Maybe it was yesterday. She wishes, most of the time, that it had never happened.

 

All she knows is that it’s here, in these dark, pulsing nights, as she tries to press her face into a pillow and sleep. She dreams as much, reaching across her bedspread and holding her own hand and pretending someone is there with her, watching over her and keeping her safe through the emptiness. She imagines the soft brown hair tumbling over her pink pillows, the breathing against her shoulder. The small hand resting on a stomach that once held a life.

 

It’s Rachel. Unfailingly so.

 

Loving Rachel was an inconvenience. Seeing her every day, hearing her voice, hearing her sing. It was often easier to avoid it. But sometimes, she broke and she pretended to be Rachel’s  _friend_ , so she could have a glimpse of the fantasy she tried to ignore in the daylight. A wolf in sheep’s clothing, defanged. Rachel would gesture wildly, and Quinn would forget that she was not a smiler. Rachel would touch her and Quinn would forget she was not one for physical affection. Rachel would dream, and Quinn would forget that her dreams were not the important ones.

 

She finds herself structuring her weeks around Rachel, the songs on her iPod are all Rachel, the stupid quotes she sneers at in magazines are Rachel, the sun is Rachel, the stars are Rachel, and so her dreams follow suit in this new Rachelcentric model of her universe.

 

Sometimes she’s uncertain she’s much more than this burning ball of unrelenting love and wanting, for a girl who pays uncustomary attention to her yet shows no sign of knowledge of the beast of a burden that runs beneath Quinn’s skin. And it feels that way, love. It rests on her shoulders, clouds her judgment, and stings tears into her eyes when reality comes.

 

She waits to escape from the thumb of this diamond masquerading as a girl. Her college acceptance letters come and she has another dream where she finds some other person, some other, achievable, maybe male, maybe female, not-Rachel person. She always forgets about this shapeshifter when her mind is racing and her body thrums with heat and her fingers move just as she thinks Rachel would.

 

Quinn hates herself for wanting one person so much.

 

She had thought, once upon a time, that love was this unachievable dream. Her parents were clearly not a love story of lore. Finn was sweet, but it was never much more than affection. As with Puck, and Sam. She had witnessed Brittany and Santana fall in and out of each other’s arms to know that fate existed, just - not for her.

 

And then it came and caught her, somewhere in this desert of anger - maybe it was the way Rachel’s face crumpled during their song - and she wishes it had stayed away. Her breakdown in New York was the product of witnessing Finn’s pining and Rachel’s hedging, avoiding the inevitable. Santana and Brittany had done their best, if only because they were wallowing in their own misery of feeling out their own love. She had thought, perhaps naively, that she could forget.

 

She couldn’t, and yet she hopes so desperately again that it is within her powers. Maybe Rachel Berry will fade away into the New Haven winter, on the wings of a song.

 

But she is weak. That she knows. That she has always known. That is what Santana knows, that is what Shelby knows, that is what Sam knows, that is what Puck knows. She is a weakling wearing heavy armor, and Rachel Berry somehow knows exactly where to thrust the knife of sweet anguish, without even trying to harm.

 

Rachel smiles at her from across the room.

 

Quinn smiles back.

 

The electricity of the moment will follow her footsteps like a secondary shadow and into her bed, swathing her in hope and hopelessness.

 

Quinn Fabray was in love with Rachel Berry. Secretly, in hidden places. In empty auditoriums, around the piano and at arms length. In locked bathrooms, trying to heal hurts and allowing caring hands to heal her own. In darkened hallways, trying to remember to fight the logic wafting from her voice. In tucked-away alcoves, forgetting to hate. In offices, behind bleachers, in song.

 

In her heart.

 

In her bedroom, wishing the voice whispering the words, “I love you too, Quinn,” was real, and Rachel’s.

 

Quinn’s eyes linger on Rachel as the girl turns away, and she smiles wider, somehow. Love is pain. But as Rachel begins speaking emphatically to Artie about something, it burns and soothes just the same.


End file.
